Setting Healthy Boundaries in a Relationship
The movers from Black Tie Moving are on their way to help you move to a new city. You’re so excited as you started dating someone new there, but you can’t help but wonder about setting some boundaries with your new love interest.
Boundaries are incredibly important to your relationship. Here, we’ll get into setting healthy boundaries in a relationship and what it looks like!
Know Your Values
In order to set healthy boundaries in any relationship, you need to be sure of what matters the most to you. How often do we evaluate our values and what’s important and necessary for us to have a healthy relationship? Not as often as we probably should.
Take some time to honestly reflect on your values and morals. Ask yourself questions about them – like where did my values come from? Do they serve me? How important are they to me? Of course, the answer will be different depending on which values you focus on. Yet, this is precisely how you will come to see how flexible or strong you are when it comes to setting boundaries for yourself.
It’s a good idea to revisit your boundaries often. Have you been letting anything slide that’s important to you? If so, you should consider how and why you did so. It’s challenging to see when we are letting someone take advantage of our boundaries until it’s too late. In turn, this leads to resentment and a feeling of despair in relationships.
As long as you are checking in with yourself often, you should be safe when it comes to protecting your boundaries!
Open Communication
Communication is key. As much as we would like, we can’t expect someone to know our boundaries unless we communicate with them. This requires frequent open and honest conversations with your partner.
It may seem easier to hide parts of ourselves that we don’t necessarily like, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. If you’re in a healthy relationship, you should feel safe to open up to your partner about your values, likes, and dislikes.
You may have some boundaries that you want to rid yourself of. Some boundaries are in place due to unhealthy protective measures – jealousy being a big one. If you find yourself setting a boundary like your partner can’t communicate with someone of the opposite sex, you may want to try and work on this.
This is where communication is incredibly important. You should express to your partner your fears and ask for their help and support to overcome them. After a while, the unhealthy boundaries will slowly dissipate if they are met with respect and understanding.
Consistency
Inconsistencies lead to a lot of confusion in relationships. If you aren’t consistent with your boundaries, your partner won’t know what to believe. This could lead to them assuming your boundaries aren’t an important part of the relationship.
In order to avoid this, you want to remain consistent with your boundaries. Don’t let things slide, so to speak. By doing so, you are letting your partner know that your boundaries are important to you and they need to be met with compassion.
